


They walk as though they have glass in their knees

by coalitiongirl_ficlets (coalitiongirl)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Split Queen, s6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8752111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl_ficlets
Summary: “She’s dead,” comes the first report, David bent over the Queen, and Emma drops the sword, something wild and fearful scraping for purchase in her heart. She turns– she turns every time, each time she’s struck Regina, no, the Queen– and Regina is still standing, her lips set into a grim line that slowly twists into a smile when she sees that they’re all looking at her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I haven't actually watched this season, but I have been craving fic that deals with canon Split Queen so....here's an appetizer until I bring myself to actually watch it, I guess. Enjoy the episode tonight!
> 
> Lots of bleeding, cutting imagery ahead, most of it imaginary but consider yourselves warned!

_She’s dead_ , comes the first report, David bent over the Queen, and Emma drops the sword, something wild and fearful scraping for purchase in her heart. She turns– she turns every time, each time she’s struck Regina, _no, the Queen_ – and Regina is still standing, her lips set into a grim line that slowly twists into a smile when she sees that they’re all looking at her.

  


_It’s over_ , Mary Margaret says, laying a hand on Regina’s shoulder, and Regina nods and breathes, as though for the first time in weeks.

  


The wind shifts, blows into Emma and pushes tangled hair from her face, blows into Regina and Regina pulls her jacket tighter around herself and shivers. It blows into the Evil Queen and she becomes dust, blown away from them in a thousand glittering shards.

  


Emma reaches for one and feels it strike her hand, feels little pieces of glass tear into her palm and bleed, bleed, bleed, red blood dripping from tiny wounds and drawing accusing red swathes across her skin.

  


When she looks down, her hand is clean and unscathed, and there is nothing glittering in the air anymore.

  


* * *

  


_She’s gone_ , Regina says at least once a day, pacing her house as Emma sits at the table and tries to think of anything other than that final moment, a sword in the Queen’s chest as she gapes at Emma in dismay. _She’s gone. I’m free._

  


_You’re free_ , Henry echoes, and he tries to catch Emma’s eye. Emma ducks away, unwilling to join in this…this _shared concern_ , this admission that everything is not all right. Emma has weeks to live and she’s wrapped up everything she’d needed to and…

  


Regina paces and paces, frenetic with clenched jaw and despair that they’re not calling despair, and she shakes her head and retreats as Emma remembers the way the Queen’s eyes had widened, the way she’d fallen to the ground as Emma had stood fiercely over her.

  


She’d worn Regina’s face, but she hadn’t been Regina. They all know that she hadn’t been Regina. She’d made it clear. She’d been _evil_ , and Regina had been–

  


* * *

  


She dreams at night of a sword in her gut, of a hooded figure who strikes her time and again. She wakes up alone in her house with her heart pounding and her eyes red, and she wonders why she cares at all.

  


Regina is throwing up in the toilet at Granny’s at breakfast, retching even when her stomach is empty and there’s nothing left to expel. Mary Margaret’s brow is furrowed in concern as she wonders about side effects of the stabbing and keeps a hand clasped in Regina’s, and Regina sits in dull silence.

  


Emma tries to speak, to do something _useful_ when there’s so little time left to do anything, but the words catch in her throat and she can only stare blankly out the window, to the place she’d been standing when the sword had cut into the Queen’s chest.

  


* * *

  


They’ve never been very talkative. They’ve navigated silences instead, long pauses that had meant as much as the blurted admissions that had followed them. ( _If I revert, I lose the people I love_ had been a doozy of an admission, and Emma still turns it over and over in her mind at night, when she can only think about swords in guts and dreams and queens.) Mary Margaret has been the one who engages them in the long, emotional talks that they both hate to need. Mary Margaret is the _easier_ relationship for Regina and Emma knows it, and so she dodges both of them until she can’t bear it.

  


But more and more, they find themselves drifting together, walking home from work and getting a bite to eat and finding peace in the quiet, rare as it is. Their steps stutter when they walk past The Spot on Main Street, and Emma still walks through it and feels invisible shards cut at her hand until she bleeds.

  


They talk about Henry. Henry is safe, and Henry is good, and Emma doesn’t think about Henry and want to claw at her own throat. They talk about their days and they talk about Mary Margaret and they talk about anything but what had happened on one night two weeks ago.

  


Sometimes when it’s night and dark and they walk for too long, Regina’s breath hitches and Emma lets out a sob and they don’t reach out for each other, just keep walking in silence as they determinedly pretend.

  


* * *

  


She dreams at night of a sword in her gut, of a hooded figure who strikes her time and again. She does everything she can to avoid sleeping at all, and Regina is just as unwilling to sleep and that’s…

  


There are nights now when there’s cider– too much cider, enough that Emma talks too much about dying and Regina says _I’m already dead_ and they both laugh wildly and drink more. Too much cider, when Emma says _Remember when you said you loved me?I think you did? Do you–_ and Regina leans forward on the couch and kisses her desperately, digs her fingers into Emma’s hair as Emma kisses her lower and lower and makes her scream.

  


Too much cider and they’re both on the floor, laughing and laughing until they sob, wrapped in a tangle of blanket and clothing and limbs and a shattered glass crunching under their knees (Emma thinks it’s hers until she notices she’s still holding a glass between her fingers, cider dripping onto her legs and making them stickier).

  


Regina tries to heal them both and her magic sputters and dies. They both look away, embarrassed, and Emma touches her hands to the cuts on Regina’s legs and pulls glass from them with her own magic.

  


Later, she remembers that her own legs are in pain, once she’s noticed that the blood on the guest room sheets is real this time. She finds tweezers in Regina’s bathroom and makes a bloody mess of her own legs until she falls asleep and wakes up in Regina’s bed.

  


There is no sign of blood or glass or cuts, and she flees to the guest bedroom again, curls into a bloody bed and thinks of a sword in a gut and wide eyes washed with hurt instead of malice.

  


* * *

  


They still walk as though they have glass in their knees, stiff and shaky and leaning too hard on each other. Henry squints at them and Mary Margaret smiles, as though this is something _good_ instead of two women who are dead still walking. There are kisses in dark corners and sometimes they feel like they’re almost enough to bring them back to life.

  


_Almost_ is harder than not. _Almost_ is gasping sobs that had started as kisses, had started as something good that still feels bitter and tainted and wrong. _Almost_ is looking at Regina’s wide eyes and hurting more, more, more, until she breaks away and falls to the ground.

  


Her knees ache, burn, and Regina drops to the ground beside her and kisses them, knows instinctively where it is that the pain is coming from. Regina drops to the ground and Emma can’t breathe, can only watch her descent and choke on her own tears and clutch her gut with quivering fingers.

  


* * *

  


She dreams at night of a sword in her gut, of a hooded figure who strikes her time and again. This time, before she’s struck, she reaches over to pull off the figure’s hood and gasps and stumbles back, her eyes wide.

  


Her own face stares back at her, fierce and proud, and she looks down as the sword plunges into her gut. Her reflection, distorted in the sword, is of Regina, of short hair and a suit jacket and wide, soft eyes.

  


She wakes up gasping. Regina says, _I’m here. It’s okay_ , and she says dumbly, _I killed you_. Regina stares at her and climbs out of the bed, and Emma sees glass still glinting in her knees as she leaves the room.

  


* * *

  


The morning is bright and clear and Regina won’t look at her, and Emma grasps her shoulder before they leave the house and says, _I killed you?_ again.

  


Regina says, “You killed me,” and it’s the first thing anyone’s said since a sword in the gut that hasn’t sounded like a dream. Her eyes are still wide, wide as the Queen’s had been when Emma had stabbed her, and makeup isn’t enough to hide the same eyes. “You killed me.” She doesn’t back away, doesn’t push Emma away, and Emma kisses her desperately and wants to say– _she was a murderer, she was the instigator, she was the one who had to be stopped_ – but they all come out as _she was Regina_ and she can’t say anything at all.

  


Regina whispers, _Isn’t that what we all wanted?_ and Emma wraps her arms around Regina’s torso and falls into a kneel, glass pricking at her skin as her knees hit the floor. Regina kneels, too, and she’s crying as she hasn’t since this dream had begun, unfettered tears that aren’t the muffled, stoppered choking sobs of people who can’t speak the truth.

  


Emma presses her forehead to Regina’s and their tears fall together, glittering as they fall from cheeks to chins to shining knees.

  


* * *

  


There is still glass in their knees, still shining in the moonlight when they walk back from work that night. Henry is at home, safe and warm and good, and Regina’s fingers are loosely in hers as they stumble home with stiff legs.

  


There is silence, comfortable and safe until Emma says, _I thought you hated her,_ and Regina says, _Everyone hated her,_ and there’s something raw and desperate in her eyes. Emma looks down at the ground, thinks of wide eyes without hatred oozing from them, thinks about wide eyes that had been lonely and hurt and betrayed for their final moments open. _I don’t know_ , she whispers, and she looks up to Regina’s eyes on hers like they’ve sighted a lifeline.

  


They reach The Spot again, the place where Emma still sees gleaming shards of what was, and Emma says, _Do it_. Regina looks at her askance. _Do it,_ Emma repeats, her heart lurching like it hasn’t since the moment the sword had entered the Queen.

  


Regina kneels to touch the spot, her cheeks pink and her head ducked. Emma kneels beside her, presses her palm to the ground and feels pebbled ground where it should be smooth, and the magic rushes through her as it hasn’t in weeks.

  


She falls back; Regina falls back, both of them shaking and disbelieving, and there’s glass in their knees and the ground and their hearts; surging free into a glittering prism of color, building and building until it shapes a woman, a figure, damnable and evil and theirs, her eyes still wide and her hand clutching at her gut as she stares at them.

  


Regina’s hand finds Emma’s and Emma holds it tight and says, _Good_.

  


_“_ Good,” Regina echoes, her voice rough and unsure and achingly hopeful, and the woman rising in front of them has raw, desperate eyes that seek both their gazes.


End file.
